Decomposing for 24 years and counting the collisions
Mark Giesbrecht (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Algorithms for the functional decomposition of polynomials have come a long way since those first presented more than three decades ago. We will make a whirlwind survey of functional decomposition algorithms, especially for the aptly-named "wild" case. One focus will be on decomposing linearized polynomials and recent work on counting and classifying those polynomials with multiple distinct decompositions -- collisions -- in some very wild cases. Another focus will be on the (insidious?) effect of this work on a young Master's student and his many subsequent collisions with these problems.
Talk slides (PDF).